John Klingberg

This Season So Far

The 2023-24 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.

Last Season

10 goals and 23 assists in 67 games — 33 points — at 20:38 a night between Anaheim and Minnesota. Minus-25, 112 shots at 8.9 per cent, two on the power play, three game-winners, 34 penalty minutes.

40 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five — the 2nd percentile — across 1,151 minutes, with his ice at 44-63 against an expectation of 44.30-66.34.

He started 52.1 per cent of his shifts in the attacking zone, the 59th percentile, so the deployment explains none of it.

That is the third-lowest chance share of any defenceman in this book who played a thousand minutes — and the lowest of all of them, Simon Benoit, was signed by Toronto in the same summer.

It needs its context: Anaheim finished thirty-second of thirty-two in even-strength chance share, and he played twenty minutes a night on its first pair. It is also 1,151 minutes, which is enough for the number to be his as well as theirs.

The Finesse Game

112 shots at a median of 50 feet, with 67 per cent of his attempts from beyond forty.

Beyond forty feet: 69 shots on goal and five goals — 7.25 per cent, more than double the league rate for defencemen of 3.17, and the third-best rate of the 109 defencemen in the league with sixty or more long shots on goal. From twenty to forty: 24 shots and four goals, 16.67 per cent. Inside twenty: 12 shots and one goal.

Ten goals from a hundred and twelve shots, and an 8.9 per cent shooting percentage from a defenceman is a genuinely exceptional figure — against a career 6.6 across 619 games.

171 tracked attempts, 32 of them slap shots — an 18.7 per cent share, which is modest — and 91.0 mph at the 51st percentile.

So the best long-range conversion on any blue line in this chapter belongs to the man with the softest shot on it and a slap share below a fifth. Set beside Morgan Rielly, who has almost no slap shots either and got nothing at all from sixty-one long shots, it is a reminder that this book can say what does not cause a goal from the point without yet being able to say what does.

The 23 assists come from where they always have: he walks the line and finds the seam, and nobody has ever questioned the offensive half of this file.

The Physical Game

6-2 and 185 pounds, which is light for the job, and 3.12 miles a game at the 86th percentile at a top speed of 21.8 mph, the 25th, with 0.6 bursts above twenty a game at the 32nd.

A great deal of ground covered without ever being quick, which at twenty minutes a night on a bad club is not the compliment it usually is.

34 penalty minutes in 67 games and 247 in 619 career games. He is not physical, does not defend by contact, and at 185 pounds does not reliably win the battles the position asks him to win.

The 2nd-percentile chance share and that sentence are close to the same fact stated twice, and the offensive numbers do not offset them at twenty minutes a night.

The Intangibles

A hundred and thirty-first overall in 2010, the fifth round, nine seasons, 619 games, 407 points across Dallas, Anaheim and Minnesota.

81 goals and 326 assists, with six seasons above 40 points and a peak of 67 in 2017-18.

He is thirty-one, joining a club that finished fourth in the league and wants a right-handed puck-mover on its second pair.

What the file says is that the offence is real and the rest of it has been getting worse for three seasons. A 2nd-percentile chance share is not a number a good club can carry at twenty minutes a night, and Toronto is going to have to play him less than Anaheim did.